About the Site

This site is actually the fourth that I've attempted; the previous one was
written from 2001-2004, and hosted by the Yahoo! GeoCities site until its
demise in 2009. The two sites before that, written between 1998 (and
possibly earlier) and 2000 (which was really just a re-write of the previous
site, just as this site is of the GeoCities one), were both hosted by the
now-defunct zNET ISP, and are both embarrassingly not-well-done. (I was
just a kid. Gimme a break.)

The site was started in 2006, initially based on the Geocities site, but was
eventually completely rewritten. The main reason for the rewrite, of
course, was because the older sites were created using Microsoft FrontPage, and
thus had a lot of unnecessary code and inefficient inline styling. There
was also a brief period where I used frames pages from 2006-2009, which was
even less efficient (with 4 times as many files to deal with!).
Therefore, in late 2009 I started rewriting the entire site using CSS
stylesheets, which also provided an easy way, using
div elements and fixed positioning, to make
"virtual framesets" (or V-frames) starting in 2011. Also in
2011, I started adding JavaScript functions to the pages, which provided a way
to easily make the "tabbed page" look, as well as dynamic timestamps
and a neat element-collapsing widget.

All current pages are written using the powerful cross-platform text editor
Vim (an improved and open-source version of
UNIX vi); specifically, the graphical version, gVim. Its syntax
highlighting and useful functions like substitution (using regular expressions)
make it easy for me to write and format HTML the way I want. In addition,
gVim's tabbed editing feature makes it easy to have a group of pages (e.g., a
whole section of the site) open in a single window.

The gritty details of changes since this site went live (if anyone cares)
are in the Change Log. You can also read the
Status/To Do page, which details the relative
completion of the pages here. There are still many projects to finish
(various re-coding efforts, the game guides, etc.), and many things I'd still
like to do in the future (these are covered in the To Do list).

Questions or comments about the site or its contents may be
directed to insectoid(at)budwin(dot)net; please put IWP: in the subject line. I do appreciate the feedback,
folks, both good and bad. However, any spam mail will be subject to
immediate deletion!

About the Graphics and Fonts

All of the graphics on this site, except for the game screenshots and a few
other exceptions, are hand-drawn using various programs. Older images (of
which there is still a very large number: over 1,100!) were drawn in Microsoft
Paint, and then converted to minimal-color GIFs using the free image
manipulator IrfanView. Newer
images (over 1,000, and slowly replacing the older ones) are either PNGs
created with Paint, or drawn as vector images in the open-source program
Inkscape (similar in function to Adobe
Illustrator), and then either used as-is or converted to PNG. There are
also certain cases, such as creating animated GIFs, when I use the open-source
program GIMP (similar in function to Adobe
Photoshop).

The fonts used in the banners and buttons are also custom-made, except for
those used on the Descent and future Jazz Jackrabbit pages (which
are adaptations of the fonts used in those games). The banner font used
on the root pages, with the blue fill and bright outline, was inspired by
Tron. The button font's letters are somewhat hexagonal in design,
in keeping with the Insectoid theme. The labels used for the blog logo
and for the Change Log are in E780-Blackletter, a blackletter font I borrowed
from Memorex exPressit, an old CD label-making program.

In the older areas of the site, where whole button images are still found, I
used a system font (DOS), a Commodore 64 font (C64), a fixed-width 6x13 font
(XPilot), and various sizes of the Verdana True-Type font. Verdana, as it
happens, is the default sans-serif font for this site, with Courier New used
for monospace text, and Times New Roman for print (and for the blog titles).

I don't remember why I wanted the banner and page icons to be so large, but
I think the layout looks good. I recently improved the design of the
banners on the root pages; previously, they consisted of small hexagons which
in turn made up the larger hexagon shapes. The new version has glowing
(and non-glowing) lines which make up the large hexagons, as well as a colored
hexagon behind the site title.

The "dragon" fractals in the background of the update pane are
Heighway dragon curves
that I generated with a freeware program called
ChaosPro. Why this fractal in
particular, you ask? Many years ago, my dad wrote a program on the
Commodore 64 in the PASCAL language that would, with a special serial
interface, draw a multicolored dragon curve on his old Hewlett-Packard 7580A
drafting plotter, changing pens at a set rate. That plot still hangs on
our den wall to this day. (And we still have the ancient plotter; whether
it's in working condition or not we don't know, but someday my dad and I may
fire it up and find out.) I'm not sure how many iterations the plot is; I
would guess that it's several more than the one here, which is 12 iterations.)

Oh, did you mean about me?

[Left] This is the best
recent picture I could find of myself; it was taken in June of 2014, at the San
Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park (hence the pirate looking over my
shoulder).

I was born in San Diego, CA, USA in June of 1986. I have been wearing
glasses since I was 3 years old, when I was diagnosed with cataracts in both
eyes (which is fairly unusual). When I was 13 I underwent cataract
surgery on each eye, and now have excellent vision with glasses. I
graduated from Poway High School in 2004, and attended Palomar Community
College from 2004-08, though I never earned a degree. (The jury's still
out on whether I can get a decent job. Only time will tell.)

My main area of expertise is computer hardware and software, repair and
troubleshooting, with a partial knowledge of Computer Science (I'm still
learning C), electronics, and Web design. I'm fairly technically-savvy
in many other areas, as well. Among my hobbies: playing old-school
computer and video games, reading science-fiction and fantasy novels (and, by
extension, participating in various blogs on
Tor.com), listening to classic rock music1, sketching, building
with Legos, building small electronic projects, collecting gems and minerals,
and collecting coins (both US and Great Britain).

Other than that, I read and share
things on Facebook, read and comment on various Web comics (someday, maybe I'll
share my reading list), play with our cats (2 at the moment; someday I'll have
a small photo gallery), watch Doctor Who, and do my best to keep my
computers (and my family's) in good working order and the software up-to-date
(basically, everything the Network Administrator—Dad—does not do).

Oh, yeah... and then there's the thing where I spend an entire day taking
photos of Uncle Sam (my dad) at the annual Old Poway Park July 4th festival.
It's a complicated but very efficient system, involving an HP Mini
netbook, three HP photo printers, a remote-controlled pan/tilt mechanism, a
Wi-Fi-controlled Canon camera, some ingenious scripting and software image
manipulation, and an improvised cowboy costume [photo at right].
(You can see some sample photos from the last two years on
the website.)

1– Most of the music I listen to was recorded
before I was even born; unusual for my age group. (I consider myself sort
of a "generational outcast", as far as music taste goes.) I do
also like classical music and Enya, when I need something relaxing to listen
to. (And the Ventures; they're good for many occasions.) My classic
rock collection has grown quite a bit in the last 10 years, especially in the
last year-and-a-half.